According to the FBI the evidence includes emails, instant messages and phone calls among the defendants. The FBI said Sandy Goyal, a one-time Dell employee who had worked with Jesse Tortora allegedly passed information over to two other defendants, Danny Kuo and Jon Horvath.

The FBI claims it was Tortora who acted as a hub for Dell financial data, supplying four different hedge funds that the FBI did not identify. It was Kuo who allegedly had an insider at Nvidia and in turn funnelled information to Tortora.

So far the FBI has charged over 60 people as part of Operation Perfect Hedge, which is looking into insider trading. Janice Fedarcyk, assistant director in charge at the FBI had some harsh words for others who try to profit from inside information, saying, "what distinguishes you from the dozens who have been charged is not that you haven't been caught; it's that you haven't been caught yet".

Stearn words indeed from Ms Fedarcyk, but as that old adage on Wall Street goes, it's only insider trading if you get caught. µ